I see one major issue with the stelae model: it greatly lowers the bar for the weight of evidence/burden of proof required to indicate a migration. If a single artefact or trait like stelae could be taken as an indicator of migration that presents a major problem.

The movement is not marked by just one artefact, but by a package, as described by Harrison and Heyd. The importance of the stelae is that

1) They are highly distinctive. There is nothing else like them.2) They are known to appear earliest on the European steppe. 3) They mark just one trail of the many that spread west* from the steppe.

This allows me to pick one particular strand out of the Indo-European spread.

* They are common on the eastern steppe and continued to develop there. There is also one at Troy I.

In your map it is possible also the contrary route: eastern "stelae" are on the Black Sea shore and only in Russia they are inland, probably across a river from Black Sea, then it isn't unlike that the Stelae come from Western Europe, where they have been found not only on the shore but inland: see Italy, where they are in inner Lunigiana etc.

In your map it is possible also the contrary route: eastern "stelae" are on the Black Sea shore and only in Russia they are inland, probably across a river from Black Sea, then it isn't unlike that the Stelae come from Western Europe, where they have been found not only on the shore but inland: see Italy, where they are in inner Lunigiana etc.

I see one major issue with the stelae model: it greatly lowers the bar for the weight of evidence/burden of proof required to indicate a migration. If a single artefact or trait like stelae could be taken as an indicator of migration that presents a major problem.

The movement is not marked by just one artefact, but by a package, as described by Harrison and Heyd. The importance of the stelae is that

1) They are highly distinctive. There is nothing else like them.2) They are known to appear earliest on the European steppe. 3) They mark just one trail of the many that spread west* from the steppe.

This allows me to pick one particular strand out of the Indo-European spread.

* They are common on the eastern steppe and continued to develop there. There is also one at Troy I.

But Remember that Harrison and Heyd didn´t link the package to stelae, that is your own idea. I have been sceptic about that idea, I remember that you developed it as an explanation to the supposedly archaic Indoeuropean Lusitanian language, once that was refuted you still clinged to the stelae to explain the BB origgin in Portugal when it was no longer necessary, since BB creation could be explained easily as a cultural phenomenon without links to language or DNA. Then, looking at DNA, southern Portugal is in Iberia the area with the lower percentage of R1b over the total population. Over everything else, I have already told you your theory has a very important gap, Zambujal/Los Millares is a very complex urban devopment, nothing like that exists in Europe at the time, nothing in the steppes or along the route you trace for the migration of that group. It is a much safer bet to atribute the development of that urban culture to Levantine migration or to local development under that Levantine influence.

But Remember that Harrison and Heyd didn´t link the package to stelae, that is your own idea.

Yes they did. Good grief! This is one of the keynotes of the paper. The major focus is the stelae at Sion. See pages 196-7 for the 11 components of the Yamnaya package. No 1: "The most important and visible is the round barrow as a personalised monument... The barrow is often combined with an anthropomorphic stela."

My contribution has been to add the archaeological evidence to the genetic and linguistic to conclude that this package was spread primarily by migration, not cultural diffusion. They do not go that far. They stick with what they can be certain of from archaeology i.e. migration up the Danube.

I have already told you your theory has a very important gap, Zambujal/Los Millares is a very complex urban development, nothing like that exists in Europe at the time, nothing in the steppes or along the route you trace for the migration of that group. It is a much safer bet to attribute the development of that urban culture to Levantine migration or to local development under that Levantine influence.

And I have already responded that the Levantine influence can be best explained via the Maikop Culture, which collapsed c. 3,100 BC. Part of the population seems to have thrown in its lot with the Yamnaya, just as the migration began up the Danube from round about the centre of the European steppe i.e. the Maikop and associated culture of Kemi Oba (which had the highest concentration of anthropomorphic stelae.)

The need for fortified bases in Iberia evidently sprang from the fact that these people were incomers by sea. There are in fact fortified settlements on the steppe - not in the Yamnaya heartland, but on the Asian steppe (Sintashta-Petrovka Culture), where the IE people were intruders.

The Maikop Culture seemed to invest more in burials than settlements, but in my view they were probably an off-shoot from Arslantepe originally.

I remember this article about a possible 4000 year old connection between Argyle and the Netherlands.

That site was mentioned the British Archaeologyfeature on the Copper Age in the July/August 2008 issue, but the story to which you link gives more detail - and fascinating stuff it is. That mixture of Irish and Yorkshire influences is worth thinking over.

In your map it is possible also the contrary route: eastern "stelae" are on the Black Sea shore and only in Russia they are inland, probably across a river from Black Sea, then it isn't unlike that the Stelae come from Western Europe, where they have been found not only on the shore but inland: see Italy, where they are in inner Lunigiana etc.

Dear Jean Manco (in Italian we’d say “manco a dirlo”), certainly you have your knowledge, but probably also your prejudices. Vizachero thinks that “Ex Oriente lux”, you probably that from Russia comes “il sol dell’avvenir”. Fortunately I am not alone in my battle now, if also the Russian Klyosov has decided not to make everything pass over.If I was you, I’d ask me why all the Stelae in Russia (and Ukraine) seem to be along the Dnepr, even though your map isn’t detailed, then no one is inland like Western European ones, above all Italian. And probably Otzi (and why this bad foreign name for one who was an Italian) with his copper axe was a Stelae man and came from the Remedello culture if I remember well. His mtDNA K1 (mine: K1a1b1) isn’t probably of Russian origin and we are waiting for his Y, that probably will come soon.

One big problem here is that the tradition of anthropomorphic stelae continued on the steppe. There are huge numbers of them, continuing into the Scythian and Sarmatian period. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurgan_stelae

I was interested only in the earliest stelae (3500 to 2000 BC), as covered by John Robb, People of Stone: Stelae, Personhood, and Society in Prehistoric Europe, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 16, no. 3 (September 2009), pp. 162-183. D. Ya. Telegin and J. P. Mallory, The Anthropomorphic Stelae of the Ukraine: the early iconography of the Indo-Europeans, Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph Series no. 11 (1994) cover the whole range of dates.

The greatest concentration of early anthropomorphic stelae in the Ukraine and Russia seems to be in Crimea. My map is on too small a scale to indicate that clearly.

And probably Otzi (and why this bad foreign name for one who was an Italian) with his copper axe was a Stelae man and came from the Remedello culture if I remember well. His mtDNA K1 (mine: K1a1b1) isn’t probably of Russian origin and we are waiting for his Y, that probably will come soon.

His axe was of the Remedello type, made in the Po Valley of northern Italy, using the ores of Tuscany. However analyses of his teeth and bones show that he spent his entire life in the Alps.

If (as I suspect) the Maikop people were strongly R1b and had arrived on the steppe via an almost circular route from the southern Caspian via the northern Levant and SE Anatolia, then it would be no surprise for them to carry a number of Near Eastern mtDNA haplogroups such as K.

The need for fortified bases in Iberia evidently sprang from the fact that these people were incomers by sea. There are in fact fortified settlements on the steppe - not in the Yamnaya heartland, but on the Asian steppe (Sintashta-Petrovka Culture), where the IE people were intruders.

One thing is the need and other the technical ability, take Los Millares, it is a fortified town of up to 1.500 inhabitants defended a a triple wall with many circular towers, that is not something created just out of a defensive need, it requires a complex society with a degree of technical development that is sorely lacking at the period, c.3000 BC, everywhere from the Easytern Steppes to Western Europe, you see that king of development in the Eastern Mediterranean area.

One thing is the need and other the technical ability, take Los Millares, it is a fortified town of up to 1.500 inhabitants defended a triple wall with many circular towers, that is not something created just out of a defensive need, it requires a complex society with a degree of technical development that is sorely lacking at the period, c.3000 BC, everywhere from the Eastern Steppes to Western Europe, you see that kind of development in the Eastern Mediterranean area.

And that is why I have drawn comparisons with the latter area. I simply felt that I should point out that fortifications tend to get built where they are needed, and that there were some on the steppe.